The first song to be released in 2025 (I checked, refreshing all social media feeds obsessively as the clock counted down last year’s dying seconds) is Michael Finley’s All I Feel is Love, and, if this is any indication of what to expect, this year seems like it will be chock full of bangers.
In All I Feel is Love, Finley wails triumphantly. The world has gone mad, he hears yelling outside, things like “FUUUUUUCCCCK YOOOOOOOOOUUUUU!” and “I FUCKING HATE YOU!”, but he’s able to keep a healthy distance, separating himself from it all, as he sings, “The world’s face is all a blur”. Perhaps he’s put away his phone. Perhaps he’s doing a social media “cleanse”. Perhaps the AI-assistance wellness apps have paid off. Who knows. And the answer may not even be necessary. Whatever Michael Finley’s been doing – reading his story in the morning, making homemade pasta, playing board games full of adventure and intrigue and cults – it’s worked: his love remains unbounded, endless, full. And isn’t that, ultimately, the point of it all? The end product – love, or a song, or perhaps both – should be what’s important. I’m not saying that the ends should justify the means, but I’m also not not saying that. Perhaps this is one of those rare exceptions.
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
